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He said: "The issues the Bar collectively faces are serious, much more so than has previously been recognised. The new regime has effectively torn up the work which was being done and in the rush to save money has provided a scheme that is flawed in principle and unfair in practice."

The widespread revolt will have the same impact as industrial action though is not technically a strike because barristers are self-employed.

Their decision comes after repeated demands from the Criminal Bar in July to raise rates of pay for legal aid work that have remained frozen since 1997.

Lawyers, who are set to boycott crown court trials, accept that publicity over a select number of senior QCs earning £1 million a year from legal aid has cost them sympathy, but emphasise that their dispute is over fixed fees. They argue that since 1997 they have suffered a 25 per cent decrease in fees in real terms and insist that a new pay structure should be negotiated.

But the Lord Chancellor, who is responsible for the legal aid budget, responded by outlining measures to cut pay further, citing a £130 million overspend which had to be recuperated.

Mr Dutton adds in his letter: "I told the Lord Chancellor that criminal practitioners would see his behaviour and these peremptory cuts as provocative and wholly unjustified."

Among barristers' chief complaints has been a move, officially implemented yesterday, to cut defence barristers' fees for 11- to 40-day trials by up to 46 per cent. Crucially, however, the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, who is responsible for the budget of the Crown Prosecution -Service, has said he has no plans to cut fees for prosecution barristers.

The difference in policy will mean prosecution barristers will earn more than their defence barrister colleagues at the same trial.

Far from earning big figures, many criminal barristers scrape a living. Sharonjit Bahia, 27, studied law at the University of Wolverhampton before joining Temple Chambers in Cardiff five years ago.

Yesterday she described how, despite coming to the criminal Bar with minimal student debt and other overheads, she was struggling to make a living.

Ms Bahia said: "Typically, you can go across to court for a case you've never been in before, you spend three to four hours preparing it in the evening, and you get paid £46.50. It costs me £50 a day to stay in chambers and I get no holiday, no sick pay, no pension. Young barristers are really, really, worried.

"People like me and people above and below me are thinking that unless something is done now, in a few years we are not going to be able to sustain a living."

David Spens, QC, former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said yesterday: "Anger is at an all-time high and morale is at an all-time low. The Lord Chancellor is cutting the fees for QCs across the board by 2.5 per cent. And then for junior barristers, he's cutting their fees in the 11- to 40-day trial range by up to 46 per cent.

"For a Lord Chancellor who has been on record in the past saying that he wants to protect the junior Bar, these cuts hurt them more than anybody."